Source: Times of Zambia
"The coach kept sending me juicy text messages and as soon as I shared my experience with someone, I was dropped from the team," recounts Susan, about her short-lived football career that ended before it even took off.

Susan, a 17 year old resident of Chilenje Township in Lusaka was trying her luck in football as a career. She was following the footsteps of her older brother with whom they started playing plastic-paper-made football with barefoot in their backyard.

After going through the basic enrolment into a named local football club that was one of the pioneers of women football, Susan would soon attract the eye of the coach who was famed for being difficult to impress on the football pitch.

Susan was equally surprised at how soon the coach was always referring to her among the more illustrious teammates but it was not for long that she discovered that as far as the coach was concerned, her football abilities were the least among his concerns.

"Today I saw a bit of your legs, though you kept covering them. I wish I could touch them, I don't want to see you in that foolish long short tomorrow," read the first of the many absurd text messages Susan's coach was flooding to her phone until she raised the alarm bells.

At her naivety best, Susan told her foot balling older brother that her coach wanted her to lose weight to improve her game but from the other messages that came her way; she could tell that the incessant communication from the coach had nothing to do with football.

It would not be long before the coach came out in the open to ask Susan out and being the young girl that she was and a close acquaintance of the coach's wife; she took the bold step to report him to his wife and an administrator within the club hierarchy.

That turned out to be her first mistake, as well as her last participation in the team because little did she know that the man she thought she was reporting a wrong to was more advanced in the trade as he even forced himself on some unsuspecting girls.

"First his wife shouted at me that I wanted to get her husband fired, then the manager I went to, told me to keep quite. When I shared with my friends, one of them narrated to me how the same manager had forced himself on her," Susan recalls.

After the ordeal, things took a turn for the worst as Susan now could not even make the substitutes' bench and she quickly figured out that the ultimate attempt was to completely drive her out of the club altogether.

"Gender Based Violence and sexual harassment in sport occurs in many forms including physical and verbal. We can no longer afford to cast a blind eye or keep silent about it. Action is imperative," said Matilda Mwaba.

Mwaba an executive director of the National Organisation for Women in Sport, Physical Activity and Recreation (NOWSPAR) and made the remarks during the Next Step conference in Trinidad and Tobago in November this year.

The rallying cry by Mwaba, who was the first woman to be elected president of the Zambia Judo Association (ZJA), could not have come at a better time than when Zambia is joining the rest of the world to observe 16 days of gender activism.

The Next Step Conference is a leading platform in sport and development community which is convened every two years.

This year, the conference brought together over 150 delegates from 27 Countries around the world from Africa, America, Australia, Asia,_Europe, Caribbean and the Pacific under the theme: 'Sport and MDG8 Promoting Global Partnerships'.

The conference wants to move towards sustainability for programmes, measuring and documentation of effectiveness of the sport for development approach, engagement of the United Nations Office on Sport for Development and Peace, as well as diversity on sport for development including age, gender and origin.

Mwaba said working together with the Norwegian Olympic Committee and Women Win a set of Guiding Principles have been compiled through a consultative process with various organisations in the sport and development sector around the world.

In Zambia, it is clearly stated Chapter 5 of the Republican Constitution on the Bill of Rights broken down under Status, Application and Interpretation saying "Women and men have the right to equal treatment including the right to equal opportunities in cultural, political, economic and social activities.

Rhoda's case, was slightly different from Susan's as she had a male club mate storming her room at midnight and almost raped her but thanks to her athleticism, she managed to overpower him and shout for help.

Her friends rushed to her room but surprisingly, they sternly warned her against reporting him to authorities because he was related to the coach and that she would jeopardise her career.

"I went ahead and reported him, the authorities promised to protect me but I was left at the mercy of the bully. That is why even the girls who are abused never report because they end up being victimised," she said.

NOWSPAR lists the forms of GBV in sport including situations where sex is used as a prerequisite for team selection or participation in programme activities, verbal and non-verbal behaviours that convey insulting, hostile or degrading attitudes about girls and women.

Rita had her netball career abbreviated after her trainer, whose overtures she had earlier turned down, publicly accused her of staining her shorts for the jersey with blood from her menstruation and that her breasts were too big for a sportswoman.

In a bid to humiliate her, the coach made the accusation loudly in the presence of other people including of the opposite sex forcing the girl to blow her top and lead the rebellion among other girls whose breasts he had often fondled unabated.

It is also important to note that GBV and one of its forms, sexual harassment occurs more frequently and impacts disproportionately more against girls and women than boys and men as the cases of the three girls, Susan, Rita and Rhoda have attested to.

That is why during the Next Step conference in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago capital, several resolutions were adopted on GBV in Sport including the need for the media to highlight cases of abuse in sport if the vice is to be curbed.

The key resolution passed at the Next Step Conference was to develop and share resources and tools to use sport to address GBV with a commitment to report on actions and progress at the 2013 Next Step Conference while the session on Gender raised the following key issues:

I. The need to re-examine interventions in promoting women's engagement in sport as it does not necessarily result in reconstruction of gender stereotypes.

II. The need to acknowledge that GBV, especially violence against women and girls, is prevalent within the sport for development sphere.

III. The need for the sport for development community to commit to addressing GBV through policy measures within organisations and across the sector.

IV. The need for the sport for development community to explore how sport can be used to contribute to addressing GBV in general. It was also decided that participants, organisations, countries and to collaborate and report at the Next Step Conference in 2013 the need to adopt standards and guidelines of addressing GBV within the sport for development sector and to develop and share resources and tools to use sport to address GBV in broader society.

• Zambia